Volume 5, The Pen of God, Chapter 17: In the Marketplace, There Are Saints
As the twilight grew darker in the shabby house, Ye Su looked at him and said with a smile: "I learned some things from your senior brother back then, so I should teach them back to you, but I have to charge tuition. What do you want to learn?"
Ning Que looked at the water bowl in his hand and the wine-like water in the bowl. He was silent for a long time, and then began to tell the stories that happened since last autumn.
The thin snow on the wall of Chang'an City fell like a curtain. When the viewer entered the city, he encountered thousands of swords. The snow in the sky began to burn, burning out a piece of blue sky. He wrote a word on the blue sky.
Ye Su is an ordinary person now and does not walk in the world of cultivation. He does not know many things, but the Jiange has already informed him about the temple master's entry into Chang'an.
"Since you can write that word, you are invincible in the city. Even the teacher will be defeated by your sword. But if you come outside the city and the teacher looks at you, you will die."
Ning Que admitted and said, "I want to know how to be as powerful outside Chang'an City."
Ye Su said: "You are the first Talisman Master to write that word. Yan Se didn't do it, and countless seniors didn't do it, so no one can teach you, and I am even less qualified."
Ning Que said: "How can we gather the will of more people?"
Ye Su said: "The most common method or way of expression is naturally the word faith."
Ning Que said: "I think so too, but I don't want to take the old road of Daomen."
Ye Su said: "So you took a huge risk to leave Chang'an, return to the mortal world, and travel around the world. This is still the same path I took when I wanted to explore life and death."
Ning Que didn't quite understand what he said.
"When Senior Brother ** was sitting by the pool reading a book and not looking at my sword at all, I realized that I still need to look at it to see through it. Once I read a word, I fell into the lower realm. Later I meditated in a small Taoist temple and watched the collapse.
When the eaves were broken, I understood the principle of breaking and rebuilding, and finally understood that the cycle of life and death is for nature."
Ye Su recalled the sword on the snowy peak in the wilderness and the scholar by the pond. He looked at him and smiled and said, "In this way, I can take Jun Mo's sword in front of the Qing Gorge."
Ning Que asked: "What does this have to do with my current confusion?"
Ye Su said: "You are writing words that no one has written before, and you are walking the path of no one before you. I said that no one can teach you. All I can do is to share my own journey of practice and enlightenment."
, spread it out for you to see, crush it into pieces and let you touch it, what you can understand from it is not up to me."
Ning Que was silent for a moment and said, "Please continue."
Ye Su said: "In that trial of life and death when I traveled around the countries, I still looked at the world with the mentality of a bystander. However, now I have become a useless person, returned to the world, and came to this place in Linkang City.
In the shabby streets, I changed from a bystander to a participant."
Ning Que thought about his feelings on the Chang'an City Wall when he saw the streets and lanes like lines and the people like ants, and on the Daze Passenger Ship when he saw the numb passengers in the cabin, and realized that he still had not gotten rid of the position of a bystander.
Ye Su looked at him and continued: "You don't want to take the old road of Daomen because you instinctively hate the existence of religion. However, you have forgotten that religion is indeed belief, but belief is not necessarily all religion, at least not all of it.
It’s a religion like Haotian Dao Sect.”
Ning Que thought for a moment and said, "I agree with this statement."
"You should know very well that, except for the powerful ones in the Taoist sect, the higher the level of the practitioner, the harder it is to ensure a clear mind. In other words, the more powerful the person, the harder it is to have faith. Things like faith,
It is not in the sky, only in the humble places of dust. To put it more simply, faith is the most unshakable thoughts and desires of ordinary people. If you want to use faith to gather people's will, you first need to figure out what they want.
."
Ye Su said: "Now that I have become a real ordinary person, I am no longer capable of thinking about noble principles, but I have the opportunity to live an ordinary life and understand the thoughts of ordinary people, such as this neighborhood
The children's belief here is just to eat."
Ning Que thought about the scenes he had seen before and nodded.
Ye Su looked at him and asked, "You haven't eaten yet?"
Ning Que saw him eating a large bowl of rice and vegetables before and said, "It doesn't matter if you don't eat one meal."
Ye Su said: "Look, this is what makes you different from ordinary people."
Ning Que understood what he meant and asked, "Do you have any noodles at home?"
The dilapidated house was truly bare-walled, and although there were old pots and old stoves, it was extremely difficult to find some rice and noodles. Fortunately, Ye Su was now well-respected in the streets, and it didn't take long for someone to bring him a bowl of plain noodles.
Ning Que finished all the soup and noodles, put the bowl and chopsticks on the window sill, suddenly thought of something, and asked: "Since you want to live an ordinary life, why do you want those children to bring food to you?"
Ye Su's answer was simple and convincing: "I can't cook."
Ning Que couldn't object to this explanation, and asked again: "Earlier, I saw those women washing clothes without soap powder at the entrance of the alley in front. I guess they are living in poverty, so why don't they even use the wash basin."
Ye Su's explanation is still very convincing: "The washing machine can indeed wash the clothes cleaner, but the fabrics used in the clothes at home are not good, and they may break after a few washes."
Ning Que said: "The lives of people here are indeed very difficult. Do you have to be in such a difficult environment to experience the feelings you want to experience? Isn't it too masochistic?"
"My understanding and study in this area have just begun. I can't give you a direct answer or clear direction. I can only give you some vague judgments of my own for your reference."
Ye Su said: "We have said before that faith can be used to unite the will of the crowd. In fact, there is no problem in saying the opposite. The strongest and most unified will of mankind will inevitably turn into faith, so we actually only need to know
What do people want most?"
"Human beings are very good at hiding their true emotions, because exposing them is sometimes like removing armor, which means danger. In ordinary days, in a warm and comfortable environment, it is difficult for you to discover their true desires and thoughts. If you ask
It is difficult to get answers to what they want. Only in a desperate period of life, in the face of the ultimate background, will the answers jump out and become extremely clear. No matter whether they were numb or philistine before, their behavior will always be
It's so honest."
Ning Que thought thoughtfully about the bravery of the people in Chang'an City on that windy and snowy day.
Ye Su continued: "What you said before was wrong. It's not that you have to be in a difficult environment to realize this, but hardship is the normal state of the world. I didn't go to Chang'an but came to Linkang because of the people of Tang Dynasty
Living a life of too much freedom and beauty is not something everyone can enjoy."
"In Linkang City, I have seen the most luxurious nobles, the poorest citizens, the most arrogant priests, and the most humble slaves. Wealth and poverty seem to be innate and cannot be changed.
, which got me thinking about a question, why can’t these things change?”
The twilight filtered into the house through the hole in the roof of the broken roof, and seemed to coat Ye Su's body with a red and warm luster. It didn't feel sacred, but it was so approachable.
He looked at Ning Que quietly and said: "Haotian's teachings say that everyone is guilty and needs to repent in order to be saved by Haotian and enter the bright kingdom of God after death. But before entering the kingdom of God, there are decades of long life.
On the road, do believers have to suffer the torture of hopeless poverty?"
"I have never been to Haotian Kingdom, and I don't know if it is as beautiful as described in the scriptures, but I know that the human world under the Kingdom of God is not beautiful. So if Haotian's compassionate eyes do not fall on the human world for the time being, or
When it is said that it is testing the human world, what should Haotian believers do?
Like for countless years in the past, we kowtow and worship at the Xiling Temple, and then wait numbly and miserably for the final salvation? Everyone is guilty, what is the sin of believers? Greed for materialism? Desire for wealth? For freedom
Yearning? A heart that cannot find peace because of these?"
"These are desires that are difficult for human beings to get rid of. If these are sins, then they are original sins that cannot be completely eradicated. For these sins, Buddhism requires meditation and takes the path of curbing desires, while Taoism uses believers to deal with these sins.
Haotian's faith is the foundation and requires believers to convert these desires into devotion. The bridge in the middle is faith, and only the academy has never restricted these sins."
Ye Su said: "These are all reasonable, but also have shortcomings. Buddhism does not look at the present world, but only places its hope in the next life. Taoism does not look at reality, but only places its hope in the Kingdom of God. The academy set the law of the Tang Dynasty, but it is still
The role of a leader requires too much of one's own qualities. I have been thinking these days, is there any other way to make this world full of original sin better."
Ning Que looked at him and asked, "What method?"
Ye Su said: "Haotian will save us at the end of life, but who will save us during the continuation of life? We must save ourselves."
Ning Que was silent for a long time and said, "So you teach those children."
Ye Su said: "This is just the beginning."
Ning Que looked into his eyes and said: "According to the teachings, only Haotian is qualified to save the world. Your current thoughts and actions can be considered blasphemy by Haotian."
Ye Su said: "Haotian loves the world, how can he not allow the world to save itself?"
Ning Que looked at him in the twilight and didn't know what to say.
As time goes by, if this person really succeeds in preaching, perhaps this neighborhood full of sewage and garbage will become a holy place in Haotian Taoism in the future, because he will definitely become a saint.
Of course, the greater possibility is that this former Taoist walker may be tied to a wooden frame by the red-clothed priests in the Xiling Temple, and then burned into a charred corpse.
…
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(Yesterday I said that I was going to save the manuscript, but I only wrote a few hundred words. This chapter was too difficult to write. My first thought was to create something like Protestantism, but I found that my ability was seriously lacking. No matter how much religious history I read, I couldn’t write it.
It's no use. If you don't have that ability, don't even think about doing this kind of thing. From now on, you will only be able to write pictures, and you will never be able to write these things again.
If you don’t understand something, then you have to prepare to go out. Until the 12th, you can only try your best to have updates. When you come back, you will work hard to write to satisfy everyone.) (To be continued. If you like this work, welcome
You come to (this site) to subscribe, give rewards, and your support is my biggest motivation.)